Here is the situation, a tournament has the following prize break-down:
Open ($$G): $500 – $300 – $200; X, A, B/below $150 each, Trophies to first, top senior (50+), K-12, K-8.
Reserve (b/38): $250 – $125; $100 to top C/below, Trophies to 1st - 2nd, top senior (50+), Class D, Class E, Under 1000, Unrated, K-8, K-5.
As it turns out in the Open section a player tied for 2nd (4 total) is also a Scholastic Player K-12. The winner of the A prizes is also K-8 player.
There are two options for handling this:
The 2nd place (K-12) player and the A prize winner (K-8) each get the money and the trophy for their respective results.
The 2nd place (K-12) player and the A prize winner (K-8) get the money for their prize and the trophies are passed down to the next eligible players.
Based on the prize breakdown, I’d like to know which option you’d use, and which is most common in your area.
Do you also plan to pass the 1st and 2nd place trophies down to the next eligible players?
Simple rule: Non-cash prizes and cash prizes are distributed INDEPENDENTLY of each other, unless the tournament description says otherwise.
In fact, sometimes multiple non-cash prizes can also be distributed independently of each other.
Example: Two players tie for 1st place. They share any cash prizes, but one of them gets the trophy based on tiebreaks, and one of them qualifies for the state championship, also based on tiebreaks. Whether or not both of the non-cash prizes go to the same player has to do with the tiebreak rules in effect for those prizes.
Where life gets messy is when a player qualifies for more than one non-cash prize and should only get one of them. For example, suppose someone qualifies for the 3rd place trophy and also for the top A player trophy. Which is the better trophy?
I agree with your selection of option 2, but your statements afterward seem to contradict that choice. It appears that the 1st and 2nd place overall trophies are meant to be part of the award with the money, but that the lower trophies are separate awards to be determined with the cash prizes in mind (1 player = 1 prize).
I included the Reserve section prizes because I think it better illustrates that the class trophies (Class D, Class E, U1000, and UNR) are part of the over all break down and are not add-ons to the cash prizes (not including 1st and 2nd).
Unless stated otherwise, players can win both cash and trophies. Those prizes would generally be awarded independently of each other.
Multiple types of non-cash prizes MAY fall into the ‘one prize per player’ category or they may not. Most of the time they do, but if there are trophies plus qualification slots into another event, those are likely to be awarded independently of each other.
You say that the top K-12 is tied with others for 2nd overall.
He gets the appropriate share of the money and the K-12 trophy.
The A class winner gets the $150 and the trophy for K-8.
I would not even consider awarding the trophy to someone else unless I had previously stated that a trophy would not be given to someone who won a cash prize. I’ve always seen the trophy as an addition to cash.
I’m not sure I read Mike Nolan’s answer as choosing option 2! In fact, I’m fairly sure that Mike is saying option 1 is correct.
I believe that saying “cash and non-cash prizes are awarded independently” didn’t mean “cash and non-cash prizes go to separate players.” I think it meant that, unless pre-tournament publicity stated clearly to the contrary, cash and trophies are independent of one another, and the same player may win both.
I don’t know. The reason I thought he chose option 2 was because that was the option he quoted from my post. But I agree that his statements lean towards believing in option 1.
Although the rulebook apparently never explicitly says “A player MAY win both a cash prize and a non-cash prize”, it does say, repeatedly, that:
(Emphasis mine in all cases.) On top of that, there are five examples on pages 191-196, in ALL of which at least one player wins both cash and non-cash (usually a trophy).
However, the question of which trophy is ‘most desirable’ is subject to interpretation.
Would you rather have 14th place overall or 3rd place Under 1200?
We once had a tournament in Nebraska which had the following types of prizes:
Cash (both place and class prizes)
Merchandise (books and chess clocks, awarded by grade in school)
Trophies (by ratings classes)
Free entries to another tournament (by age groups)
The way it was set up, someone could have won something in all 4 categories, and I think two people did win something in all 4 categories.
Oh, and there was also a '‘biggest upset’ cash prize (based on pre-tournament ratings) and a ‘best game’ cash prize, chosen by the editor of the state magazine.
I would like to thank everyone for their input. The local organization decided yesterday that what we really want to do is offer more prizes to more people. (Depending on the TD the prize distribution varied greatly.) As such we voted to be clearer in our advertising and that non-Place awards (Age-based, scholastic trophies) are less desireable to cash prizes and not to be awarded to the same individual player.
In practice a tournament has the following places and the associated award:
Place
1st Place = Cash + Trophy
2nd Place = Cash
3rd Place = Cash
Top X = Cash
Top A = Cash
Top B/below = Cash
Top Senior = Trophy
Top K-12 = Trophy
Top K-8 = Trophy
Eventhough the prize is different, we felt that the placing was still in this order/priority and as I mentioned we wanted to reward as many players as possible at each tournament.
The one thing that you do have to think about is that cash prizes are split evenly among all the tied players. Suppose the Top K-12 is in a huge tie for Top B/below. You could end up to the point where the trophy is actually worth more than 1/nth of a n-way tie. (That might be one of the reasons that the cash and trophy prizes are by default distributed independently of one another.)